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All Rise...

Judge Daryl Loomis's version of watching may not be legal in some states.

The Charge

J'Accuse!

Opening Statement

After a decade of mixed-media projects and opera direction, Peter Greenaway
returns to the world of cinema with a renewed energy in Nightwatching,
his best film since The Cook, the Thief, His
Wife, and Her Lover. The first in a proposed series of films about artists
(go figure), this detailed analysis of Rembrandt's famous painting, The Night
Watch, is significantly more interesting than it might sound.

Facts of the Case

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (Martin Freeman, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy) has become the most celebrated painter ever to come from Amsterdam.
His life has hit its apex with the announcement of the pregnancy of his wife
Saskia, (Eva Birthistle, Breakfast on Pluto) and the offer of an
extremely large commission from the city militia to paint their portrait, a
tradition amongst their ranks for many years. The lack of freedom makes the
artist wary, but he agrees at the urging of his wife for the money. Sure enough,
the nasty politics that rule the lives of these fake soldiers get the better of
them. What starts as a nightmare for Rembrandt becomes delicious revenge as a
murder in the ranks gives him the chance to paint accusations into his art,
immortalizing these men as the scum he felt they were.

The Evidence

Paintings, paintings, and more paintings. Throughout Peter Greenaway's
career, painters and their art have a preeminent thematic role, used not only
for set decoration and the look of his films, but also for dramatic purposes.
Whether the subplot of the live Vermeer pastiches in A Zed and Two Noughts or the main
character and dramatic thrust of The
Draughtsman's Contract, painting is somewhere in virtually all of his films.
In Nightwatching, he takes the concept even farther by making painting
the plot. Ordinarily, watching somebody paint isn't the best way to spend two
hours, so it seems at first like a strange thing to make a film about. Greenaway
has never cared much for traditional plotting, however, and we're safe in his
hands. The story is more than dramatic enough to carry the film, and it's such a
beautiful piece of art in itself that it may not have mattered anyway.

Nightwatching works two ways: as a biopic of Rembrandt and as a
veiled art history lesson. The life story acclimates us to the time period and
the personalities of Rembrandt, Saskia, and the characters who will so inhabit
the painting. Rembrandt is presented as something of a family man; somebody who,
outside of his art, cares only about his wife and coming child. The militia
members are ancillary to Rembrandt's life, but integral to the story. Aside from
the family story that takes much of the film, we learn little bits about the
fake soldiers and their families. They backstab each other, ostracize members
getting in the way, and much worse. These tidbits become more important as the
film progresses, taking shape as the true thrust of the film.

Within all these subplots, Greenaway presents us with many of the little
details that have made The Night Watch such a fantastic and long-studied
painting. Accompanying the film is a second disc, presented as an extra feature,
that contains Greenaway's feature-length documentary, J'Accuse, a full
analysis of more than thirty of the mysteries within the painting, one for each
character in the piece. Greenaway is as much a master of the documentary as he
is of fiction, especially in the way he can enliven his subject matter, which
tends toward the arcane and obscure. Likewise for J'Accuse, this is the
best art history lesson I've ever had, showing me more in a more engaging way
than any class I've attended. What's really incredible is how he can so
seamlessly weave these so-called mysteries into the plot of
Nightwatching, giving his audience an almost subliminal art lesson and a
juicy murder mystery at the same time. The painting serves as a template for the
script. They work so well together that it's hard to tell whether the feature or
the documentary is the primary film. It works both ways, either one in support
of the other.

Greenaway keeps this painting theme alive in the look of the film, as well.
This isn't new to the director but, like many of his films, the set design,
lighting, and performances in many of the scenes in Nightwatching
resemble paintings in themselves. This is as stagy a film as Greenaway has made
in some time, and the minimal camera movement certainly allows us time to drink
in the beauty of these images. But this isn't the long, moving fresco he created
in Prospero's Books; these paintings, like those of his subject, mimic
the portraiture popular in Amsterdam during Rembrandt's time. The sparsely
dressed sets are lit from odd, multiple angles and the actors inhabiting them
barely move at all. The scenes are still and quiet, but they are deliberately
(maybe obsessively) put together to appear as portraits, but in cinematic
form.

The performances are equally stagey, going so far at times as to break the
wall and speak to the audience directly. These scenes are mostly used to explain
larger passings of time and, while jarring at first, are useful in conveying
information that would have dragged down the film. Freeman does well as
Rembrandt. He is portrayed as kindly as opposed to his grimy subjects, but still
blusters and flails about his artistic demands. Freeman does fine, embodying the
loving, but absent, husband and father as well as he does the bloviating,
obsessive, somewhat crazy artist. Additionally, Natalie Press
(Chromophobia), an adult actress, deserves mention for her performance of
Marieke, a preteen girl at the center of the darkest subplot in the film. She
plays the girl at once as sweet, scared, and crazy with courage and
believability.

E1's DVD for Nightwatching is very fine all around. The film
alternates from very dark to quite bright and it is strong in both. The picture
is crisp and clear throughout. Though this isn't a colorful film, it does convey
the soft hues of the artistically minded scenes, rendering them full of
beautiful detail. The image is, overall, very good. The surround mix for the
film is not terribly dynamic, a fact reflected in the DVD mix. While the dialog
is always strong, music and ambient sound are more difficult to discern.
Greenaway is never one for a bombastic score or crazy sound effects, but this
mix is still very light. The stereo track is nominally worse, but still clear.
The extra features are excellent. Aside from the previously mentioned
J'Accuse documentary as the second disc, the remainder of the first
contains an hour of interviews with Greenaway and members of the cast, which are
universally excellent. This may not be the most heavily-stocked disc, but with
the documentary included as a second disc (don't buy the cheaper single disc
edition, which is only the feature), this is a high quality release.

Closing Statement

After years of loving Peter Greenaway's art, both in film and elsewhere, it
seems I had lost perspective on exactly why that is; those reasons just blurred
out of perspective and his work just became a part of me and I accepted that.
With a film as spectacular as Nightwatching, his best in many years, the
reminder of how powerful a director can be is very nice. I don't know if this
film will bring any new converts into Greenaway's world, but those already taken
with him will find his best work in some time.